Late stumble gives visitors hope

Date: December 27 2012

Jesse Hogan

DAY one of the Boxing Day Test was, at least until the finals drinks break, set to be a triumph for Australia with bat and ball.

In the field, Australia had capitalised on some insipid batting to dismiss Sri Lanka within two sessions. At the crease, it was on track to overhaul the visitors' first-innings total of 156 well before stumps, thanks to another encouraging opening stand between Ed Cowan and chief slayer David Warner.

Going to stumps only six runs in arrears with seven wickets in hand, and with captain Michael Clarke at the crease on 20 and showing no signs of his recent hamstring strain, was cause enough for Australia to be well pleased. However, the three wickets it conceded in the last 23 overs provided kernels of encouragement for Sri Lanka. If Australia is to return to the No. 1-ranked Test nation, it must learn that when it is so dominant, as in this match, even those few kernels are too much. Test leader South Africa set that standard in Perth. When it secured a 62-run first-innings lead by dismissing Australia cheaply on day two of the teams' recent series-deciding Test, it converted that hefty advantage over the home team into a pummelling, by racing to 2-230 by stumps.

When Warner was in full flight in this match at the MCG, Australia was scoring above five runs an over and was on track to build a 50-run lead by stumps. While it would not have been a thrashing of recent WACA Ground proportions, a scorecard that read one or two wickets down for 210 at the end of day one would have been severely dispiriting for a team in Sri Lanka's position. It would also have served notice to all of Australia's looming opponents of its intent to ruthlessly exploit its advantage.

The 3-150 produced in the last session delivered a day's performance that sat comfortably in the ''good'' or even ''very good'' category, but short of ''great''. Such standards are high, but they are the type Clarke, coach Mickey Arthur and the rest of the Australian hierarchy are seeking to instil in the team and the players who fill it.

Australia's batsmen had freedom to bat aggressively by virtue of chasing only 156. Debutant seamer Jackson Bird was rewarded for his uncomplicated, nagging line-and-length philosophy with the early wicket of Dimuth Karunaratne, who was followed within the hour by Tillakaratne Dilshan and captain Mahela Jayawardene.

Being three down at lunch is not ideal for a team that has chosen to bat first, but there are numerous precedents of teams then recovering to finish the day in the ascendancy.

No team, however, can expect to gain the ascendancy or even go close to breaking even by conceding 7-77 in a session on an unthreatening pitch.

Sri Lanka deserved to be castigated for its lack of concentration, having lost a wicket within three deliveries of each of the three breaks its innings overlapped: first-session drinks, lunch, second-session drinks. By the end of the innings, however, the more pressing issue for Sri Lankan coach Graham Ford was how so many of its batsmen departed to poor shots - to the extent it is probably easier to list those who did not.

Kumar Sangakkara fell into that rash-shot category but his had at least come after a superb - and invaluable - half-century, and required a brilliant sprawling outfield catch from wicketkeeper Matthew Wade. Wicketkeeper Prasanna Jayawardene also emerged from the innings with credit - and a cracked thumb courtesy of a Mitch Johnson bumper that simultaneously claimed his wicket.

Australia began its innings with great restraint, scoring only a single boundary in the first seven overs, but then surged on the back of Warner. By the 12th over the left-hander had 50 runs to his name thanks to some robust cuts, drive and one brutal heave off Chanaka Welegedara over the mid-over fence.

After an hour Australia was already 0-90, with Cowan's scoring rate of 30 from 57 inadequate only in comparison to his exuberant partner, who now has three consecutive half-centuries.

Warner's latest innings was perhaps most deserving of a century of the three, such was the ease at which he was handling all of the Sri Lankan bowlers - with the exception of spinner Rangana Herath, who was not tried against him. The innings nevertheless ended when he pulled the medium pace of Angelo Mathews to deep square-leg for 62.

Of the three wickets Australia lost within seven overs, rounded out by the departures of Phillip Hughes (10) and Cowan (36). The most disappointing was Hughes as it lacked the intensity the team had consistently showed until then.